Claire Bernardi Appointed Director of Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris

Claire Bernardi has been named the new director of the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris by the French Ministry of Culture, taking over from Cécile Debray, who departed in October to lead the Picasso Museum. Bernardi moves from the Musée d'Orsay, where she served as a curator since 2012. Her responsibilities will include crafting programs that reinterpret the museum's collections, which feature 19th- and 20th-century works like Claude Monet's 'Water Lilies'. A key challenge is boosting attendance by attracting local visitors to offset declines in international tourism since the pandemic began. Before her tenure at Orsay, Bernardi managed modern art collections at the Centre National des Arts Plastiques. Her notable curatorial projects include 'Gauguin the Alchemist' at the Grand Palais in 2017–18, 'Picasso, Blue and Rose' at the Musée d'Orsay in 2018, and the current exhibition pairing Chaïm Soutine and Willem de Kooning at the Orangerie, co-curated with Simonetta Fraquelli of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.